The Mirrored Hand Illusion: I Control, So I Possess?

Abstract

Certain situations may not only cause people to misjudge external information but also distort people's perception of themselves. The present study is the first to report the mirrored hand illusion which could be generated when the experimenter imitated the fist-clenching movements of the subject synchronously. The subjects formed the illusion that the experimenter's hand was "something I can control" when being imitated synchronously. In addition, a sense of ownership over the alien hand was established by integrating multisensory signals and comparing these signals with preexisting body presentations. This method might represent a new avenue for research on the formation of self-consciousness.

Effects of Human Synchronous Hand Movements in Eliciting a Sense of Agency and Ownership

“…The elicitation of agency is consistent with that reported in previous work, including the study of personperson interactions by Zhou et al 9 and studies of human-rubber hand interactions [6][7][8] (Table 1). In the humanrubber hand interactions, researchers have found that the synchronous movements of a rubber hand, placed congruently with a participant's hand, elicited a sense of agency in the participant [4][5][6][7][8] , and that a sense of agency was elicited when the participant was interacting but viewing the synchronous movements of a 180° rotated rubber hand in mirror-and non-mirror-symmetrical ways, as if it was another person's right or left hand [6][7][8] ( Table 1).…”

“…This is because 0 means 'uncertain' on the seven-point Likert scale (−3 = totally disagree, 0 = uncertain, +3 = totally agree). This kind of uncertainty seemed consistent with participants' sense of hand location in Zhou et al 9 , in which the median of the shifted hand position (i.e., 3.32) was slightly below the uncertain level (i.e., 4).…”

“…The result of sense of ownership is consistent with the human-human results of Zhou et al 9 but inconsistent with those of research on human-rubber hand interactions [6][7][8] (Table 1). In the human-rubber hand interactions, researchers have found that the synchronous movements of a rubber hand, placed congruently with a participant's hand, elicited a sense of ownership in the participant [4][5][6][7][8] , but not when the participant was interacting while viewing the mirror-and non-mirror-symmetrical synchronous movements of a 180° rotated rubber hand [6][7][8] (Table 1).…”

“…This research suggests that even though the rubber hand was in the position of another person, the participant had a sense of self-agency in relation to the rubber hand. On this topic, a recent study has indicated that people experienced both the senses of agency and ownership during interactions when viewing synchronous, mirror-symmetrical movements when seated face-to-face with an experimenter 9 , that is, another person's movements that simultaneously included synchronous movements and mirror-symmetrical movements elicited senses of agency and ownership. However, there was no report of the effect of synchronous movements on the senses of agency and ownership in the non-mirror-symmetrical movement condition 9 .…”

Proceedings of the Iii International Scientific and Practical Conference “Psychological Health of the Person: Life Resource and Life Potential”

“…In particular, researchers are exploring the effects of mindfulness-based practices on the formation, development and correction of self-consciousness in health and mental disorders. The legality of the use of correction programmes is based on mindfulness-based techniques as additional methods of various mental disorders treatment (including anxiety, depression, substance use disorders and other mental impairments, accompanied by selfconsciousness disorders) (Hazif-Thomas, Stephan, Walter, & Thomas, 2015;Fuente, 2016;Zhou, Zhang, Yin, & Yang, 2015;Berezovskaya, & Tichonova, 2012). There is an increase of awareness of negative thoughts and feelings in the process of using such programmes.…”